Now this is truly an astonishing story of perseverance and hard work to bring back a vibrant and upbeat celebration of Undead Culture:

Every year at 8:29 p.m. on August 29, zombies invade Bardstown Road between Eastern Parkway and Bearno’s in the Highlands. People spice it up with themes for their zombie costumes including brides, hello kitty, Adam and Eve, and I even saw Darth Vader once (Not a zombie. Just Darth Vader??). The zombie walk trend is not unique to Louisville: it occurs all over the world. Louisville has one of the largest events in the United States according to recorded statistics.

Louisville Zombie Attack began as a birthday celebration for three friends who share birthdays with the king of pop, Michael Jackson. Word of mouth spread, and it grew to the large event that it is today. An estimated 5,000 zombies, survivalists and victims converged on the Highlands last year, resembling an undead mardi gras. Although there was a permit in place to close the street, the amount of people left some business
owners, the police department and others worried about safety issues and upset about vandalism.

Yes, tragically Zombie Walks are often plagued with such doubts and concerns because of the negative stereotyping of the Differently Animated by much of the media. Madison’s Zombie Walk went off without a hitch, but the annual Halloween celebration here has been slowly strangled by corporate management, and it’s a pity because the city is gradually losing a Zombie Friendly public gathering.

Not so in Louisville, where concerned Zombie Allies came together with a plan:

This year: it’s taken a lot of work and effort from some key people to make it happen – or rather, to make it happen safely with a street closure permit. These people really deserve a
round of applause from the legions of undead fans. Richard Teachout of Zombie City (an attraction at Asylum Haunted Scream Park), George Timmering, Owner of Bearno’s, his manager Charlie Cronin, and Jon King (one of the friends who started the tradition) have been working for months to take necessary precautions to keep the zombie walk alive legally and safely.

And The Zombie Rights Campaign salutes them for their efforts! Truly an outstanding job, and it sounds like a fantastic event for Zombies and Living people to come together has been preserved for another year and, one would hope, for future generations as well.

Not only did the key supporters of this wonderful Zombie outing come up with funding for a sizeable off-duty police presence, they have assembled volunteers to powerwash the streets and buildings along the ‘Attack’ route in case any Undead citizen, through no fault of their own, happens to ooze a little.

Yes, I know, it’s terribly unfair that Zombies are held accountable in ways that the Living never are (when’s the last time anyone powerwashed after smokers left cigarette butts or someone smeared gum on the sidewalk?) but meeting the city’s demands head-on in this manner was both forward thinking and great community relations.

PR is important when fighting for Undead Rights.

The ZRC is very happy to learn that the ‘Zombie Attack’ will go forward again and create a fun atmosphere for building mutual understanding between the Living and the Differently Animated. Very happy indeed.

“With added planning and organization time, we think it will get better each year,” concluded Teachout. “It’s a great fun thing to get people together and keep Louisville weird – we’re all about having fun.”

The Zombie Rights Movement thanks these proud friends of Zombiekind for their hard and diligent work.

Tags: Zombie Public Event

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, August 29th, 2011 at 12:34 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.